The invention relates to an industrial robot, as well as a method for commanding one such industrial robot. The invention more particularly relates to controlling industrial robots including an articulated robot arm with several axes.
Industrial robots are known of the robot arm type, intended to be used in environments in the presence of human operators. For safety reasons, it is desirable for the robot to be able to send communication signals, for example an audible sound, to a human operator located near the robot arm. This for example makes it possible to indicate to an operator that the robot is waiting for a particular action from the operator, or to warn the operator that he should not be in a particular area near the robot because the robot arm will be moving in that area. Typically, the emission of such an audible sound is done using a dedicated transducer that is connected to a control unit of the robot.
However, this solution is not fully satisfactory. One drawback is that it does not make it possible to guarantee that the audible sound will be emitted for the operator. For example, it is possible that although an order to emit the audio signal is delivered by the control unit, no audible sound is in fact emitted by the transducer, for example due to a failure of the transducer or a failure of a data link between the transducer and the control unit. This therefore results in a safety risk for the operator.
The invention more particularly aims to resolve these drawbacks by proposing a method for controlling an industrial robot as well as an industrial robot having improved operating safety, in which an audible sound can be delivered reliably to an operator working near the robot.